Fifty Tales, or The Heart of the Matter

Famed orator Hugh Lupton selects fifty tales from the heart of his repertoire.

I’ve always told traditional narratives – stories from that winding track that leads from nursery rhyme to the great tales of creation and redemption, by way of ballads, riddles, folk-tales, wonder-tales, legends, epics and myths. These stories have been shaped by countless voices and they’ve stood the test of time. They’re concentrations and repositories of human experience. They speak in the enigmatic picture-language of dreams. I’ve loved them since I was a boy. It’s now more than forty years since I started telling stories for a living.

Over that period I’ve told many, many tales. New stories are always being taken on. Old ones lie fallow. But, among them, there are some that won’t rest. Once learned, they’ve never gone quiet. They keep returning. They’ve always got something to say.

All storytellers who’ve served their time have a similar accumulation of restless tales, always demanding to be told. These are the stories at the heart of a repertoire. In this book I’ve netted fifty of mine. Each of them is a favourite. They represent my storytelling core. They’re alive. They’re eager to escape. They shouldn’t be held down on the page for too long. They want to take wing on the tongue and the breath. You can set them free.